


Ten Years

by BlueNerdBird



Series: Despite the Odds [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 18:37:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5508512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueNerdBird/pseuds/BlueNerdBird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>CONTAINS FALLOUT 4 SPOILERS!</p><p>After the Sole Survivor returns from the Institute for the first time, MacCready finds her first and is horrified at what she has seen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Years

**Author's Note:**

> That whole part of the game made me emotional when I first saw it, and when I returned all my companions were too calm and none of them had any specific dialogue so this happened. It's kinda short, but hopefully you all like it.

It had been one day since she had disappeared right in front of him. Not the kind where you turn around and suddenly you’re left alone carrying your son out of an shitty, run-down metro from a pack of ferals, but the kind where where she literally de-materializes as she holds her hand up in a brief wave. MacCready had been aimlessly wandering around Sanctuary after she disappeared, talking a bit with Sturges, who was a pretty cool guy as far as they go in this neighborhood, cleaning up his sniper, and playing cards with Valentine. They were all shitty distractions, and he knew it.

A small thought nudged in the back of his mind, _“What if she’s not coming back? What if the Institute turns her into a synth, or never gives her back? Then you’ll have lost her and Lucy.”_ He silenced the thought with several bottles of Gwinnett Stout.

After his dinner of a mirelurk steak, he fed the scraps to Dogmeat and headed back to the ramshackle building he shared with her. He was grateful when Dogmeat followed him.

“Good to know I’m not the only one missing her.” he said, reaching down to scratch him behind the ears. Just before going into the cabin, Mac heard a sound like a gunshot, and a huge flash of blue light by the bridge.

 _“She’s back,”_ shot through his head like a feral ghoul, and he raced towards the entrance to Sanctuary. Several others were asleep, as it was almost pitch black outside, and he was the first to find her.

He ran towards her, and watched in horror as she fell to her knees, holding her head in her hands. God, had something happened to her? His hands were almost shaking as he reached her and dropped to his knees to bring her in a hug. He didn’t realize how much fear had grown in his chest over leaving her, and when she wrapped her arms around him weakly he knew something was wrong.

Her shoulders shook in his arms, and he felt hands grip his jacket like a lifeline, something had definitely gone wrong.

“It was longer than ten years.” she whimpered. MacCready felt his heart jump, when she first told him about her son, she had already killed Kellogg and had seen into his mind with that freaky mind-reading shit. He was supposed to be ten years old, did that mean…?

“He’s old enough to be my father.”

 _“Holy shit,”_ he thought, but didn’t say it aloud. MacCready could only hold her as thoughts raced through his mind. Missing over half your child’s life, it was unimaginable. He made a silent promise that after this was done, he was going to find Duncan and never let him go. Empathy was rare in a man like MacCready, but with her, it came effortlessly. He knew how much it meant to have a child, and to have said child nearly taken away from you. Dogmeat seemed to sense her panic too, and he whined next to them. She removed one of her arms around him to pet Dogmeat.

“That’s not all,” she sniffed several times, mixed in with a choked gasp, “he’s the leader of the Institute.”

MacCready’s jaw dropped. The Institute? Bogeyman of the Commonwealth, all under the control of her elderly son? If he had heard that from anyone else, he wouldn’t have believed it.

“The things I saw… Oh God… They think they’re doing the right thing, creating robots as real as actual people, but they’re taking away any humanity they might have. They see them as science experiments and us as savages.”

MacCready knew better than to talk, she needed to talk about it and he was going to let her, even though he had about a million things to say.

“I want my son back. The real Shaun, not this twisted, sick version of him, that’s all I’ve been holding on to, that maybe if I just survive long enough I can get him back,” more sobs escaped, and he felt his heart twist again, if anyone else had hurt her like this he would’ve put several bullets through their brain, “Now I don’t know what to do. I can’t go against my own son, but I can’t support the Institute. Shaun…”

Her breathing sped up, and she tensed up in his arms, and damn it all if he didn’t know what a panic attack looked like. He knew that she like it when he played with her hair, so he did. Knocking that ridiculous fedora off of her head, he pulled her in close and toyed with her hair, running his fingers through it and hummed quietly. It was her favorite song, something by Skeeter David or something. It seemed to calm her down anyway, and the crying began to slow. Dogmeat had wormed himself onto her lap, but MacCready moved to sit behind her as she busied her hands in Dogmeat's fur.

“Thank you, God I don’t know what I’d do without you in this god-forsaken place.” she said, and he felt relief as her voice returned to its normal pitch.

“You wouldn’t last a day, not without my charming good looks.” he tried to pull a joke, and he knew she saw straight through it, but it earned him a small smile.

“Oh of course, but I think I’m gonna be okay.” They had broken apart slightly, and he watched her as she observed the town Sanctuary has become. “This is my life now, there’s no going back.”

“I had to come to the same conclusion you did, once I lost Lucy. We can’t change anything in the past, but as long I’m with you, it’s better. Hopefully you think so too.” he said, lost in a moment of complete sappiness, but the light that was rekindled in her eyes meant the world to him, and there was no chance in hell he was ever going to leave her side.


End file.
